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Up until this point we have met Jonah, heard his call from God, seen his foolish attempt to run away, and witnessed God's supernatural power in saving even the pagan sailors. This week brings us to the most well-known part of Jonah, the big fish, and his prayer from inside its belly. Jonah's prayer is framed by the fish; let's read this fish sandwich:

'And the Lord appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights. Then Jonah prayed to the Lord his God from the belly of the fish, saying,
“I called out to the Lord, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me. Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.’ The waters closed in over me f to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God. When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love. But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to the Lord!”

And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.'

Confidence

Reading the first few phrases in this prayer give us a good insight into how Jonah finally begins to get it right. He declares: 'he answered me', 'you heard my voice' and 'I shall again look upon your holy temple'. These are three points at which he recognises that when he speaks, God listens. Some have perceived this in a poor light; Rabbi Pesikta de-Rav Kahana claimed about these verses that prayer needs a raised voice because 'arrogance conquers shyness' - but he is wrong. Jonah's attitude here is, at last, one of a recognition of his desperate need for God. His prayer begins with a cry 'out of my distress' - he was in a position of dire need and turned to God for the answer - the right way to turn. His confidence that God hears his prayer is not a self-confidence, but an inspired hope in his God. We have this same promised eternal hope; God answers prayer. God is our loving Father and loves to hear us honestly ask for our honest needs and desires. Jesus himself demonstrated this in Matthew 7:7-11 - his promise is that God, our loving Father, will not hold back from giving us every good thing - so we should pray in confidence, knowing that God is in control and that He has the best in store for us. This is why it is so wonderful that we have the privilege to finish our prayers with the words 'for Jesus' sake', or 'in Jesus' name' - it is as if we have a cheque written to us signed by Jesus, to be redeemed by his own Father - what are we to write on this cheque? Clearly Jesus will never allow his name to be signed on a cheque asking for an oppurtunity to commit adultery, for example, but we should have the boldness to ask God of everything we need and desire, knowing that His Son will be asking Him on our behalf. 'How marvellous, how wonderful is my Saviour's love for me!' (Charles H. Gabriel)

Salvation

If Jonah's prayer has a theme we can learn from today it must be able to be summed up in this word: salvation. Not only does Jonah finish his prayer with the life-changing truth that 'salvation belongs to the Lord' but the mindset of the entire prayer is one of joyfulness and thankfulness for what God had done in his life to save him. This passage began with the statement 'Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.' It should come as no surprise to us that Jesus used this picture in Matthew 12:38-42 to prophesy his own burial and resurrection; God was intentionally using Jonah to illustrate some poor reflection of what Jesus would eventually do for all of us. The idea underlining this theme is one of God's sovereignty, and we would do well to recognise this. Many (bad) Bible teachers in today's society like to tell us that the Christian life is one in which we earn God's favour by living a righteous life, and that those of other religions will also get into heaven providing they have lived that same good life; this is simply untrue. Jonah correctly declares that 'salvation belongs to the Lord' - it is His, just as creation is His. He controls it, saves whom He will and does not have to change anything based on the way we think, speak, or act. Jesus' torture and death was performed as our substitute, not just as a good example; we all live fallen lives under the power of sin, and Paul tells us that 'the wages of sin is death' in Romans 6:23. We must respond to salvation in the same way that Jonah did - by acknowledging that we are saved entirely by grace (Ephesians 2:8-9) and that therefore we are required to thank God with everything we have - it all belongs to Him anyway.

God's sovereignty

While we saw a glimpse of God's sovereignty over salvation in Jonah's prayer we would do the book of Jonah an injustice were we not to recognise at this point that everything up until now has been pointing us in only one direction: to the fact that God is absolutely in control. At the beginning of this article I made an absolutely awful joke about a fish sandwich - the truth is that this passage would be better described as a God sandwich. Have a look at the opening words: 'the Lord appointed...' and the closing words: 'the Lord spoke...' Jonah's intention in this passage is not for us to respond by thinking, 'what a great prayer Jonah spoke', but 'what an awesome God Jonah is praying to'. Jonah's experience inside the belly of the fish was entirely due to the fact that God chose that to happen. The reason why Jonah got out of the fish was that God chose it to happen. Nothing in the whole of history has ever happened without God actively choosing it, and understanding that to some degree is key to our response to the God of all creation. God did not create and then stand back to see what happened, He kept His hands inside creation and sustains it to this day. Some may question, 'what about catastrophic events like the holocaust?' which is an excellent question. I do not know the exact answer, and do not believe I will until God calls me home but I do have a confidence that God is in control, and that He is a good God. When the Jews at the time provoked the Romans into killing God I expect that some would have questioned who was really in control. We know however that Jesus was required to die, and the truth of the gospel has changed my life as well as the lives of countless others. Were I in control I doubt if I could ever have sent my own son to die the most gruesome, torturous death ever imagined, but God did - and thank God He did! Thank God I'm not God, and you're not God.

"God's Words For US" from Cecelia Lester

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